Photo of Pregnant Self

Well there is my body, and then you get to see my head! Ha ha ha! I was trying to get a shot of me with my webcam on my laptop, and it was IMPOSSIBLE to get my head into the picture and still be able to reach the mouse to "take the picture." So you get two pics and can put them together! I'm just starting to look pregnant. It's all up high, but soon that little baby is going to pop my stomach right out! My belly button has started to stretch, it's funny. I also have just felt the baby move for the first time (that I'm sure of) yesterday. Hooray!

Weekend Trip to Lava Hot Springs, Idaho

We went up to our property in Lava this weekend with our friends Chris, Kami, and their baby (he's the one under my Lake Powell post), and their friends Jed, Amy, and their 3 children. We got there Friday evening and whipped up some hot dogs and baked beans. The next day we went to town and rented tubes to float the river. There is a couple "small" waterfalls you can tube down, but I was too scared so I started farther down the river and waited for the rest of the group. I watched Roob go over the falls, and it didn't look bad AT ALL. It was more of a slope, actually. Well finally we all catch up to each other. The current was pretty strong, and there were some decent little rapids to go through. The trick is to try to keep yourself feet first so you don't flip over. Well guess who flipped over? ME. L-a-m-e. I flip over in about waist high water and the current is dragging me (now out of my tube) over all these big rocks and my legs are getting all banged up. As soon as I got my footing back, I'd get plummeted by more tubers who can't help but hit into me (there are a TON of tourists floating the river, too) and here I go back into the current of death. Next thing I know here is Mr. Roob the hero coming to help me. I'm such a dork that I don't realize if I go to the side of the river I'd get out of the strong current! He helps me figure this out and the rest of the way down was fine. It was pretty fun, actually.

Ok, so now we're all out and we want to go down again. This time, Roob and a couple others convince me that the waterfall part wasn't bad at all and I should come on it. Well I had seen him go over it and it didn't look bad from atop the hill. So I consented. As we're getting into the river I started to worry a bit. Maybe I shouldn't do this??? Well we did. Apparently since we got into the river in a different spot than Roob and them got into the first time, we got sucked into a different current area and it took us clear over to the other side of the waterfall! All of a sudden I see this cliff and I started to freak out. Over we go, all four of us, down about a 6-8 foot vertical drop!!! Kami, Mitch, and Roob crash into each other and then are basically spit out of the rapids down river. I somehow manage to stay on my tube (thank goodness) but I am totally stuck in those rapid suction holes! At first I was like, "oh good I'm ok", but then I realized that I could not get out. I was wiggling and everything but there was NO WAY that tube was going out of that hole. So I've got the waterfall plummeting me from the left, and a huge rapid bubbly wave on my right. I thought my only way out would really be to flip myself off the tube and use my legs to get me out of the hole. But then I wasn't sure how deep it was, and I was scared I'd be sucked underwater or beaten to a pulp by the rocks. Then the worst fear hits me. What if more tubers come over the edge of the waterfall and FaLL ON me? There's no way they could see me or know that I was down there. All of a sudden I started to panic! That would really, really suck. Anyways, next thing I know, my adorable little hubby is literally running upstream in the rapids coming to save me. I have NO IDEA how he got back upstream, but he said it was total adrenaline since he was worried. He couldn't get too close to me, so he handed me a really long thick tree branch and eventually was able to pull me out of the rapids while still on my tube. I was so happy to be out of that hole I could've cried.

Then there was one more bigger rapid area to go through, and by this point I am terrified. I wasn't able to get my tube turned around feet first in time, so I went over it BACKWARDS and did a back flip off my tube and into the water. It was a miracle I didn't hit any rocks or hurt myself. WOW. After that, Roob hooked onto my tube the rest of the float down since he was so worried. The rest of the ride was really fun, but after that 2nd trip I was DONE. They all went down another time, and his friend Chris got really banged & scratched up and was miserable the rest of the day. Poor guy. Worst I got was two stubbed toes, some cuts on my hand, and bunches of bruises on my body. I consider myself one lucky momma.

After that, we hung out at the big pool and went on the waterslides. They are so fun, but too quick of a ride! Later we went back to our lot and grilled steaks over the fire, and Jed cooked up some dutch oven potatoes with bacon and cheese(yum)! The next morning, the boys went and played golf and we packed up all the stuff out of the trailers. We leave our trailer up there for the summer (that was the first time we brought it up there this year). We had the 3 dogs with us, and Gator kept jumping in and out of the pond and getting everyone wet and muddy. Goose was rolling around in dust so she turned from white to chocolate brown. She was disgusting! But the dogs had a blast, even though by the end of the weekend I wanted to kill them all. Sunday morning I had a crazy emotional annoying moment and started screaming like crazy woman at the dogs. My allergies were driving me nuts (being in the woods), and I was hot and annoyed that Gator kept getting me dirty (just put on a pair of clean pants, too). Not to mention that there were 5 billion bees and flies buzzing around my head at all times. Oh well. I totally overreacted, but I blame it on the pregnancy. :)

My Adorable Sister!!!

Oh my gosh I love this picture! This is my sister, Ashley, and she's about 30 weeks pregnant (I think) in this picture. She's due the end of August. She looks so gorgeous and cute! I had to put it on my blog. She is 22 years old. And her baby will be my first little niece or nephew (except for the ones I married into with Roob's family). So now I'll be an official aunt!!! So exciting!

Latest Bambino News

Went to see doctor yesterday. Hooray! Everything is going well! My next appointment (in one month) is supposedly some really cool one where they do a targeted ultrasound. I guess you're supposed to be able to see facial features and stuff on it. FUN! Let's see...what else did she tell me? Oh, the other thing is that this time the baby refused to show his malehood, so if we wouldn't have seen it last time, I STILL wouldn't know it was a boy! Good thing we saw it last time or I would've been so disappointed!

My mom came up and had lunch with me yesterday. On a whim, we ended up going to Babies R Us and started my registry. It was fun, but a bit overwhelming. I was exhausted by the time we left the store and when I looked at the clock I knew why--it had been THREE hours! OH MY GOSH! Just trying to decide what brand of thermometer to buy was too much for my little head! :) They had like 8 different ones, at least! No, there were probably more. But the good thing is that I can add to it and delete stuff online and in the store. Nice. They have much more stuff online that I like, so I added a few things last night when I got home. I have to say they rolled out the red carpet for me when I got there. The staff was wayyyy nice & helpful, and they give you some free stuff and all this registry stuff all organized and stuff! I was impressed. It was cool.

More Baby Name Ideas

These are some family names we found that are sorta cool...I'm just going to list them all here but we could use these as first names, middle names, or a combination of the two.

Erickson family names: Rowan, Matthew, Nelson, Brock, Christian, Asay, Jacob, Benjamin, Alexandar, Preston (well Preston is Preston, England, where many of his ancestors are from)

My family names: I still don't know many b/c I haven't looked at mom's pedigree charts yet. But a couple are Matthew & Gunter. Ok got names from mom and some are crazy--like Epenetus or Zephaniah, for example. heh heh. There's also Saxton, Adam, Crockett, Evens, Wensley...wow they are really old school names.

Other names we like: Jase, Mason, Dutch, Chance, Casey, Trey...to be continued. Ok here's some more: Ian, Sam, Evan.

My brother (Nathan) and Meredith

They are expecting a baby boy one month before me and Roob. Look how cute they are!!!

More Lake Powell Pictures

Ok, there's Roob chillin' out on our cool tube that you can pull behind the boat. The next picture is of Kaden, our friend's baby that I fell in love with on the trip which made me more baby hungry! The next pic is of one of the gas fire bombs the boys did at our campsite. And last pic is of our little ghetto camper trailer!

Lake Powell Trip

For those of you who love the water, you've gotta make time to head out to Lake Powell in your lifetime. It's GORGEOUS there...just miles and miles of canyons, coves, and open waterways sunk inbetween HUGE walls of red rock. Very cool. And the water is nice & clean, too. We left on Tuesday evening and arrived about 1:00am into a horrific windstorm. It was blowing SO HARD that you literally could hardly stand up, much less see since there is tons of red sand and it just blew right into your eyes. It was ridiculous. We hauled down our camper trailer, a friend hauled down our boat, and some other people brought their boat. So there were 10 of us with 2 boats, one trailer, and some tents. (glad i was in the trailer! ahhh!) That first night everyone who wasn't in the trailer slept in the trucks since the wind was so bad. I seriously did not sleep at all that night since the trailer was rocking so hard from the wind, plus I thought it would blow over and I was scared. What the???

Anyways, that next day we woke up and drove to find our campsite. Very cool spot on the beach, where we could launch the boats and everything without having to drive down to the marina/docks. But all day that freaking wind blew and blew, so as a result of NOT being able to be outside for more than 2 minutes, ALL TEN PEOPLE where hanging out in my trailer. Now my trailer is not that big!! You put 4 people in there and it's rather crowded. I seriously thought I was going to flip out on everyone after a few hours of claustrophobia and listening to all those people and not being able to move. My only salvation was that I had brought a book, and I tried to slip away into book world and forget about my aching back since I hadn't moved all day. By late afternoon, I had had it. I totally had a breakdown. I started crying on the couch to Reuben (the others were out putting up their tents) and I couldn't stop. Well, it kept on blowing all through the next night, too. But then, ahhhhh, hallelujah, the next morning the wind died down and we were left with PERFECT weather for the rest of the trip. Mid 80's during the day and in the 60's at night. It made the rest of the trip totally appreciated!!!

We had our friends Chris, Kami, and their new baby, Kaden, sleep in the trailer with us for the trip. Their baby is so good and he's so adorable! It actually made me want mine to hurry up and come out so I can play with him and snuggle with him, too. Anyways, we'd hang on the boats all day. The boys tried wake surfing (yes, their is such a thing) and a few of them were able to get it down. Roob did really good, but wasn't able to let go of the rope since he needed a bigger wake to ride. There also was lots of wakeboarding, swimming, and getting pulled in a tube behind the boat. I couldn't do any of the "fun" stuff, but I did let Roob pull me in the tube and it was SO FUN. Kami and I rode together and I swear I haven't laughed that hard in ages! But Roob went pretty slow so we wouldn't bang up the poor Baby Jones too much.

We had hoagies for lunch everyday, but then for dinner we'd head back to our campsite and made some good ol' fire grilled food. We had steak, pork chops, bratwursts (I had a hotdog), hobo dinners, etc. Very yummy! Then we'd do huge bonfires and grill marshmallows and stuff. Some of the guys we went with were CRAZY and made "gas bombs" out of plastic/glass bottles and would fill them with gasoline, poke a hole in the cap, and literally set the bottle IN THE FIRE. Can I tell you "BAD IDEA JEANS"!!! (joke from SNL) Myself and one other girl were way too paranoid and stayed in the trailer during all the gas playing festivities b/c I did not want to get my eye blown out or anything. Why are boys so dumb? Luckily, no one was hurt, but you couldn't pay me enough money to get me to hang outside during all of that. It was crazy! The gas would build up so much pressure that it would spew like 10 feet out the top of the bottle through the hole in the cap!!! One bottle they did shot in the air like 50 feet! I was freaking out! But it was cool to watch from afar and in a safe place! Once I find my camera I'll post some pics!!

The BIG Wax

So I got my underarms waxed for the first time today. The waxing wasn't as bad as I expected, but the after-effects is what hurts! They're all sore and it's tough to keep them nice and aired out, if you know what I mean! :) I decided to try it since I will be living in a swim suit for the next week on my trip to Lake Powell. When I shave them it's a disaster zone! Anyways, I will have to post pictures when I get back so you can see how gorgeous it is there (and did I mention, HOT?). We'll be going with a few friends, and 2 of them are bringing babies under 3 months old. That should be interesting. We're staying in our RV camper on the beach. We have our wakeboarding boat, and we also have one more boat that will be there. So far, I'm about 20 weeks pregnant, so I don't think my internal heater has kicked on just yet. My luck it will kick in while I'm down at Powell!

Oh, this is a random thought but how cool that Paris Hilton is actually going to jail? Unbelievable.

Ok, well I need to get my house cleaned up since a couple friends are coming to house-sit for us and watch our dogs. It's just getting late, so I really should go to bed. Maybe I'll clean in the morning? hee hee

Found the Monkey

I got smart while out and about, and stopped at Cracker Barrel to see if they had any of those vintage looking sock monkeys. Score! They did! He is so cute! He actually looks just like the picture I posted a few days ago. I'll use it to hang off the crib or something for decor. Otherwise I think I'll just do the room in the colors of the monkey...I don't necessarily want monkeys all over the place. But at least it gave me an idea for a color scheme.

I went shopping around today for Roob's birthday (coming up soon) and I managed to find ONE pair of jeans. Grrr...sometimes I HATE shopping. My feet seriously hurt so bad after a few hours I about cried. What the??? I tried on a bunch of maternity clothes, too, but nothing that I loved. I did try on a few dresses, though. The thing with dresses and me is that they look good from the front, but NOT from the back. Frustrating!